This invention relates to golf tees, and in particular to an improved tee having upper and lower portions of diverse materials.
The traditional, nondescript, wooden golf tee remains the most common type of tee. Such tees, however, are easily broken, and as a consequence their remains are found scattered about teeing grounds. Wooden tees, having only slight flexibility, can alter the flight of the ball or cut down on driving yardage, particularly if the ball is teed improperly. Prior inventors have improved upon the wooden tee by using other materials, such as metal (to prevent breakage) or plastic, to provide increased flexibility. Multi-part tees have also been proposed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,633,919, which issued to Frank J. Liccardello in 1972. In that patent, a flexible stem is attached to a metal tip for penetrating the ground; a removable inserter is provided for pushing the tip into the ground, the inserter having a shank that is passed through a bore in the stem to bear directly against the tip so that sufficient force can be applied for inserting the tee into hard ground. While the metal tip of the prior patent was useful to golfers, and despite the fact that the tee was essentially unbreakable, the tee did meet with criticism from some groundskeepers, fearful that lost tees of this type might damage their turf equipment. Also, the untraditional requirement of using an insertion tool for the tee was cumbersome.